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Richard Milton McKenna (1913- 1964) was an American sailor and writer.

McKenna was born in Mountain Home, Idaho, in 1913. Seeking more opportunities than could be found in such a rural part of the country at the height of the Great Depression, McKenna joined the Navy in 1931.

McKenna served his 22 years in the Navy, including 10 years of active sea duty. McKenna served in both World War II and the Korean War, and retired shortly after the Korean War as a Chief Machinist's Mate. He took advantage of the GI bill to go to college, where he studied creative writing. He attended University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and, while there, he fell in love with, and married, one of the librarians.

Although he also published short stories, McKenna's best known work was The Sand Pebbles (1962), made into the well-known 1966 film of the same title. The hero was an enlisted career sailor on a US Navy river gunboat named the San Pablo in China during the 1920s. McKenna himself served aboard a river gunboat on the Yangtze Patrol, but about ten years following the events in his novel.

"The Sand Pebbles" won the $10,000 1963 Harper Prize Novel and was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

McKenna suffered a heart attack and died in 1964.

He began his writing career publishing science fiction. His posthumously published short story "The Secret Place" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1966 and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1967. Casey Agonistes and Other Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (1973) collects the title story and four other short works.

• The Yangtze Patrol
• Biographical profile from the Boise Weekly
• Biographical profile
• Richard McKenna at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database